An Hour is a Sea

An Hour is a Sea
Between a few, and me —
With them would Harbor be —


      -F898, J825, 1865


This poem is similar in content to the famous poem Wild Nights, Wild Nights. For comparison, let’s look at that one, written four or five years earlier:

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden –. Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!

It's a similar idea right? But "Wild Nights" sweeps you away. It’s full of anguish, but it’s also very romantic. 

But this poem on the other hand? There is something in the extreme compression that adds a note of desperation to it. The poem almost seems like it's in a hurry, desperate for that hour to be over. The three lines are like three final gasps of air before the poet sinks down into that Sea.

Those three perfect end rhymes of Sea/me/be seem cloying at first, almost lazy, but when given an emotional emphasis they begin to sound plaintive, almost like a dolphin cry: eee eee eee.

An Hour is a Sea

Dickinson morphs time into space. She was ahead of Einstein! E=MC2 and relativity are both at play here. Time, a mere hour, expands into the great distance and depth of an unfathomable sea.

Between a few, and me —

“A few” is a phrase that makes you wonder; not one, not many, but a few. For what it's worth, this poem was sent by Emily to her beloved friend and sister Susan Gilbert Dickinson. So who are the few? Maybe it was Sue’s family, including her brother Austin, that Emily was missing, but maybe it was just two, Emily and Sue.

With them would Harbor be  —

If the hour is a sea, then being with these few is a harbor from that seeming endlessness of time.

The startling thing here, to me, is the bareness. I think of that phrase from Dickinson’s poem about a snake, “zero at the bone.” This poem is zero at the bone. It’s as if it is all she could muster. 


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A lovely piece of music called "An Hour is a Sea" by Dextro

P.S.  David Preest's notes on this poem are informative, "When Sue was staying with her sister, Martha Smith, in New York, Emily concluded a short letter (L312) to her with this poem. She led up to the poem with the words, ‘[I] turn my thoughts [to you] without a Whip – so well they follow you.’ An hour had also felt long in poem J781. The harbour is reminiscent of the last two lines of poem J249 and the last lines of poems J368 and J506."

P.P.S. Here is a heartfelt response to this poem from another blogger who just goes by Possibility.